Miles to Go (23 page)

The discovery led to the establishment of the Bunker Hill Mine and Smelter, which was operational for more than a hundred years, until closing in 1981. A sign outside the city read:

This is the town founded by a jackass and inhabited by his descendants

Kailamai assured me that this was true. “I know,” she said. “I used to live here.”

We crossed the interstate to the old part of town and went inside the Silverhorn Motor Inn and the Silver Spoon Restaurant. The front lobby was small and cluttered with various sundries for sale or borrow: bottles of toothpaste,
toothbrushes, shampoo, and shaving cream, and an entire wall of ancient VHS videotapes.

I asked for two rooms but Kailamai objected. “That’s too much money. Let’s just get one room with two beds.”

“It doesn’t seem proper,” I said.

“You were like two inches from me in the tent,” she replied.

She had a point. I asked for one room.

The woman handed me a key to room 255 and informed us that the hotel had VCRs in each room and the videos were all free to borrow. She also warned us to be careful on the roads, as one of the restaurant’s waitresses had been hit by a bear while driving the night before.

“He just ran right into the side of her car. Poor girl was shaking like a leaf.”

I sent Kailamai to the restaurant while I carried both of our packs to the room, then came down and joined her.

“I don’t have much money,” Kailamai told me as she looked over the menu. She had already eaten a dinner roll and was buttering a second.

“Don’t worry, it’s my treat.”

She looked relieved. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

I ordered for us two “Nancy Melts”—a house specialty burger on grilled sourdough with bacon, grilled onions, Swiss cheese, and sautéed mushrooms, and for dessert we had huckleberry pie à la mode.

That night as we lay in our beds, Kailamai asked, “How far do you think we walked today?”

“About twenty-six miles,” I said.

“I’ve never walked that far before.” She was quiet a moment. “How far are we walking tomorrow?”

“About the same,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “Night.”

“You did great today, Kailamai. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks.” She knelt by the side of her bed and said her prayers.

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant—pancakes and bacon with scrambled eggs. We left the hotel and then stopped next door at a convenience store for bottled water, trail mix, and beef jerky. We didn’t worry about dinner. There were towns close enough that we’d be eating at a restaurant that night.

We crossed the interstate bridge and continued our walk. After a few miles Kailamai said, “This might seem like a dumb question, but do you know how to get to Key West?”

I hid my smile. “Basically. I’ve got maps.”

“Shouldn’t we be walking more south?”

“After Butte, Montana, I’m planning to walk southeast through Yellowstone.”

“We’re walking through Yellowstone?”

I was curious that she’d included herself on my journey. “I was planning on it.”

“I’ve heard that there are a lot of buffalo there. I’ve always wanted to see a buffalo in real life.”

“That would be cool,” I said.

Maybe an hour later she asked, “Do you believe in UFOs and aliens, that kind of stuff?”

“No. But I know where there’s a crop circle,” I said. “Wilbur, Washington. I walked past it.”

“I think I’ve figured out where aliens come from.”

“Where?” I asked, genuinely wanting to hear her theory.

“From Earth.”

“Explain,” I said.

“My theory is that aliens aren’t in flying saucers, they’re in time machines.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. If time travel is possible …”

“A big if,” I said.

“Yeah, but people used to say that about flying. Now everyone is doing it. So let’s say that there are things we don’t understand yet about time, which is logical, or at least possible, right?”

“I’ll give you that.”

“So if it is possible to move through time, that means that there are people already here, observing us.”

“Why would they want to do that?”

“Same reason we study history. Besides, wouldn’t you want to see the past if you could? Watch Lincoln give the Gettysburg Address, or listen to the Sermon on the Mount?”

“But then we’d see them around us. The physicist Stephen Hawking said, ‘The absence of tourists from the future is an argument against the existence of time travel.’”

“Haven’t you ever read a book about time travel?” Kailamai said. “People from the future can’t show themselves or be involved in our circumstances or they could mess things up and change history.”

“History is messed up.”

“Yeah, but if they did, they might disappear. You know, like in all the science fiction movies.”

“So you think aliens are us?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? The way people describe aliens, with two eyes, our body shape, smaller bodies. As technology takes over, it makes sense that our brains would evolve bigger and our bodies grow smaller.”

“You’re a very interesting young woman,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said.

Near the Kellogg city limit, Kailamai pointed to a car dealership north of the freeway. “That’s Dave Smith Motors. It’s one of the biggest car dealerships in the world.”

I thought it odd to find such a large dealership so far from a metropolitan area.

“I used to go to school there, right by the used car lot. Dave Smith tore down my elementary school to build his dealership. We were the Sunshine Unicorns.”

“The Sunshine Unicorns?”

“I know, pretty lame, huh? Probably a good thing he tore it down.”

Four and a half miles down the road we saw signs for something called the Sunshine Miners Memorial, which struck me as a peculiarly cheerful name for a disaster site. We didn’t stop.

In the afternoon we passed through Silverton and the foothills of the Bitterroot Mountains, where we exited the highway at the town of Wallace, which called itself the “Silver Capital of the World.” We ate lunch at the Brooks Hotel Restaurant and Lounge.

The restaurant claimed to have a “famous” salad bar, which was, in fact, the most ordinary salad I’d ever encountered. I guess they meant famous, as in, lettuce is famous.

Actually, their claim of fame was unusual. While practically everything in Washington was advertised as “world famous,” I noticed that since I’d been in Idaho I hadn’t seen a single world-famous shake or burger. Instead, everything in Idaho was “historic.” Trees, roads, churches, rocks, mines, just about anything you could attach a sign to.

After lunch we went to the Harvest Grocery Store to stock up on water, fruit, and Gatorade. We were climbing the highway on-ramp when we saw a man standing at
the side of the road with his thumb out. He was an older man with a bushy gray beard that fell to the middle of his neck. He wore a train conductor hat, bright yellow-lens sunglasses, and overalls that were striped like the old seersucker suits.

He waved to us. “How y’all?”

“Good afternoon,” I said.

“Hey,” Kailamai said, looking a little anxious.

“How’s the fishing?” I asked.

“Fishing?”

“The hitchhiking,” I said.

“Oh,” he said with a squint. “Ain’t a whole lot of cars coming out of Wallace this time of day. Mind if I walk with you a piece?”

“Not at all.”

He ran to the edge of the road and lifted a small canvas pack from the ground, then ran back to catch up with us, much more nimbly than I expected from a man of his years.

“Name’s Pete,” he said.

“I’m Alan. This is Kailamai.”

He tilted his hat. “Ma’am.”

“Hey,” she said.

“Where y’all be headed?”

“East,” I said. “Way east.”

Though he walked with us, his thumb was still extended at his side. “I’m not headed too far. I go to Mullan every week to see my friends.”

“You’re from Wallace?”

“Most days I am. Seventy years of ’em.”

Kailamai walked with her head down, not involving herself in the conversation.

“What do you do in Wallace?” I asked. “For a living?”

“Prospectin’ mostly. Some loggin’, but mostly prospectin’.”

“For gold?”

“Always gold. Well, that ain’t entirely true. I’ve done some silver, but mostly gold.”

“Have you had much luck?”

“I always have luck,” he said with a slight chuckle. “Just sometimes it’s the good kind, sometimes it’s the bad kind. More the latter.”

“Do you have a family?”

“I did the whole nine yards. My kids live nearby. They keep in touch sometimes.”

“Your wife?”

The look on his face was answer enough. “Done with her. Or she done with me. Don’t remember which.”

“So, in all those years of prospecting, did you ever find the mother lode?”

He swatted at the air in front of him. “Nah. Thought I’d found her a few times, but her milk always dried up.”

“How many years have you been looking?”

“About since I was old enough to hold a pan. I’m still lookin’.”

“How do you do that?” I asked. “Carry on for seventy years without success.”

“Success?” he said. “I’m this side of the dirt, relatively healthy, good friends, kids not in prison, don’t know what your definition of success is, but that’s mine.”

“Of course,” I said, feeling the reprimand. “I meant, all those years without finding what you were looking for…”

“Ah,” he said. “The question is, what would’ve happened if I found her?” He pointed a bony finger at me.
“Worst thing you can give a man is what he wants. The lookin’s the thing. When a man gets what he been lookin’ for, the road ends, don’t it.” He smiled. “But you’re young. You’ll figger it out.”

As I thought this over, an old Dodge truck pulled up on the shoulder ahead of us and stopped. “That would be my ride. You wanna lift?”

“No, we’re just walking.”

“Good day for it. You be safe now, sometimes the loggin’ trucks pass a little too close to the shoulders.” He opened the passenger side door and climbed in, and the truck sped off.

Most of the day was easy walking, with wide shoulders and plenty of shade. Kailamai and I talked a lot, covering topics as broad as religion to why I had never had a pet dog. And then there were Kailamai’s jokes.

“A doctor is talking to his patient one day, and he says, ‘I have some bad news and some terrible news.’ The patients asks, ‘What’s the bad news?’ and the doctor says, ‘You only have twenty-four hours to live.’ The patient says, ‘Oh no! What news could possibly be worse than that?’ And the doctor says, ‘I’ve been trying to contact you since yesterday.’”

Twenty miles or so into our day, we entered Coeur d’Alene National Forest and the roads started climbing again. The roadsides were all inclined and uncampable, and it was getting dark when we reached the state line of Montana and Lookout Pass Ski Resort.

We walked up to the front doors of the resort, but even though there was still some snow on the ground, the
lodge was closed for the season. The place looked abandoned, so we pitched our tent behind the main building. I was connecting the last pole on our tent when Kailamai whispered, “Alan.”

She was discreetly pointing at a man who was standing near the lodge looking at us.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

I stood up. “Evening,” I said.

“You can’t camp here,” he said gruffly. “It’s private property.”

I walked toward him. “I’m sorry, but there’s no place else around here and it’s getting dark. But I promise we’ll be gone before anyone else gets here in the morning.”

He looked over at Kailamai then back at me. “You’re not in trouble with the law, are you?”

Kailamai walked to my side. “No,” she said.

“You know we probably wouldn’t tell you if we were, but no, we’re not. Sorry about trespassing. We would have rented a room, but there was no one here.”